The Bear and the Nightingale(45)

“Your daughter Olga was married at fourteen.” Anna followed him breathlessly. Olga had prospered since her marriage; she was become a great lady, a fat matron with two children. Her husband was high in the Grand Prince’s favor.

Pyotr seized a new loaf and broke it open. “I will consider the matter,” he said, to silence her. He took a great ball of the steaming insides and filled his mouth. His teeth ached sometimes; the softness was not unwelcome. You are an old man, Pyotr thought. He shut his eyes and tried to drown his wife’s voice with the sound of chewing.



THE MEN WENT TO the barley-fields at daybreak. All morning, they scythed the rippling grass with great howling strokes, and then they spread the stalks to dry. Their rakes went to and fro with a monotonous hiss. The sun was a live thing, throwing its hot arms over their necks. Their feeble shadows hid at their feet, their faces glowed with sweat and sunburn. Pyotr and his sons worked alongside the peasants; everyone worked at harvest-time. Pyotr was jealous of every kernel. The barley had not grown so tall as it ought, and the heads were thin and poor.

Alyosha straightened his aching back and shielded his eyes with a dirty hand. His face lit. A rider was coming down from the village, galloping on a brown horse. “Finally,” he said. He put two fingers in his mouth. A long whistle split the midday stillness. All across the field, men put aside their rakes, rubbed grass-ends from their faces, and made for the river. The deep green banks and the chuckling water gave a little relief from the heat.

Pyotr leaned on his rake and pushed the wet, grizzled hair from his brow. But he did not leave the barley-field. The rider was coming nearer, galloping on a neat-footed mare. Pyotr squinted. He could make out his second daughter’s black braid, streaming behind her. But she was not riding her own quiet pony. Mysh’s white feet flashed in the dust. Vasya saw her father and swung an arm in salute. Pyotr waited, scowling, to reprove his daughter when she came nearer. She will break her neck one day, that mad thing.

But how well she sat the horse. The mare vaulted a ditch and came on at a gallop, her rider motionless except for the flying hair. The two came to a halt at the edge of the wood. Vasya had a reed basket balanced before her. In the bright sunlight, Pyotr could not make out her features, but it struck him how tall she had grown. “Are you not hungry, Father?” she called. The mare stood still, poised. And bridleless—she wore nothing at all, not so much as a rope halter. Vasya rode with both hands on her basket.

“I am coming, Vasya,” he said, feeling unaccountably grim. He set his rake on his shoulder.

The sun glanced off a golden head; Konstantin Nikonovich had not quit the barley-field, but stood watching the slender rider until the trees hid her. My daughter rides like a steppe boy. What must he think of her, our virtuous priest?

The men were flinging the cold water over their heads and drinking it in great handfuls. When Pyotr came to the creek, Vasya was off her horse and among them, passing a skin bag full of kvas. Dunya had made an enormous pasty in the oven, lumpy with grain and cheese and summer vegetables. The men gathered round and sawed off wedges. Grease mixed with the sweat on their faces.

It struck Pyotr how strange Vasya looked among the big, coarse men, with her long bones and her slenderness, her great eyes set so wide apart. I want a daughter like my mother was, Marina had said. Well, there she was, a falcon among cows.

The men did not speak to her; they ate their pie quickly, heads down, and went back to the scorching fields. Alyosha tugged his sister’s braid and grinned at her in passing. But Pyotr saw the men throwing her backward glances as they went. “Witch,” one of them murmured, though Pyotr did not hear. “She has charmed the horse. The priest says—”

The pasty was gone, and the men with it, but Vasya lingered. She set the skin of kvas aside and went to dip her hands in the stream. She walked like a child. Well, of course she does. She is a girl still: my little frog. And yet she had a wild thing’s heedless grace. Vasya left the stream and came toward him, gathering up her basket on the way. Pyotr had a shock when he looked her in the face, which is perhaps why he frowned so blackly. Her smile faded. “Here, Father,” she said, and handed him the skin of kvas.

Oh, savior, he thought. Perhaps Anna Ivanovna did not speak so wrong. If she is not a woman, she will be soon. Father Konstantin’s gaze, Pyotr saw, lingered again on his daughter.

“Vasya,” Pyotr said, rougher than he meant. “What is the meaning of this, taking the mare, and riding her so, without saddle or bridle? You’ll break an arm or your foolish neck.”

Vasya flushed. “Dunya bid me take the basket and make haste. Mysh was the nearest horse, and it was only a little way, too short to trouble with a saddle.”

“Or a halter, dochka?” said Pyotr with some asperity.

Vasya’s blush deepened. “I did not come to harm, Father.”

Pyotr looked her over in silence. If she’d been a boy, he’d have been applauding that display of horsemanship. But she was a girl, a hoydenish girl, on the cusp of womanhood. Pyotr remembered again the young priest’s stare.

“We’ll talk of this later,” said Pyotr. “Go home to Dunya. And do not ride so fast.”

“Yes, Father,” said Vasya meekly. But there was pride in the way she vaulted to the horse’s back, and pride also in the control with which she turned the mare and sent her cantering, neck arched, back in the direction of the house.